


Child of the stars

by AidenGK



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Bow - Freeform, Bow is stressed out, But even Glimmer, Catradora (slightly), Childbirth, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Glimbow, Glimbow baby, Glimmer is basically stubborn as hell, Glimmer-Bow child, Hiding Medical Issues, Initial panic, Outer Space, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Stubbornness, Trip to Krytis, adora - Freeform, and pretty much everyone else, catra - Freeform, glimmer - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26339398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidenGK/pseuds/AidenGK
Summary: How long had that torture been going on?If she had to guess, it had all started a few hours after she got into bed. Initially, they were just simple pangs not so different from the ones she had already experienced over the last few weeks but, unlike them, they slowly had become more and more intense and above all… regular.In the darkness of the spaceship's bedroom, Glimmer had silently kept track of their duration and of how far those cramps distanced from each other, recognizing in them a sort of regular pattern... which led to a simple conclusion: they were actual contractions.In all this - paradoxical as it may seem - she didn’t warn the only person who could have helped her: if she told Bow that she had just gone into labor, she would have surely frightened him to death, that was true, but it would have given him a more than valid reason for being mad at her as well.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 29





	1. Conceal

Among all the ideas that Glimmer had ever had in her whole life, that one had certainly been the worst ever, overtaking even the time when, as a child, she decided to play outdoors all day, despite the violent blizzard raging outside.

Any girl with a little bit of common sense would have given up taking part in an interplanetary journey at such an advanced stage of her pregnancy, but the queen of Brightmoon, since the coronation's day, had proved to be hardworking and dutiful, just like her mother was. She would not have been able to take a few months off without feeling extremely guilty.

Bow's grievances were of no avail: he immediately expressed his opposition to her participation in which was nothing more than a simple control visit of the Krytis colony, but she simply wouldn’t listen.

According to Glimmer, the volunteers of that expedition needed to feel the appreciation of their queen firsthand, without delegating her task to someone else... and Bow had no choice but comply. He had no power against his wife stubbornness: arguing with a wall would have provided better results.

And promptly, the day after their departure, Glimmer had regretted having done things her way, more precisely when she opened her eyes again in the middle of the night, due to the umpteenth series of cramps that tightened her lower abdomen in a vise.

The pain granted her a reprieve only after a couple of minutes and during all that time Glimmer kept her face pressed against the pillow, in order to stifle any noise for fear of waking Bow up... but when the contraction disappeared, allowing her to lie on her side, she realized that the young archer hadn't been lying next to her for quite a while, judging by the time shown on the clock.

How long had that torture been going on?

If she had to guess, it had all started a few hours after she went to bed. Initially, they were just simple pangs not so different from the ones she had already experienced over the last few weeks but, unlike them, they slowly had become more and more intense and above all… regular.

In the spaceship bedroom's darkness, Glimmer had silently kept track of their duration and of how far those cramps distanced from each other, recognizing in them a sort of regular pattern... which led to a simple conclusion: they were actual contractions.

In all this - paradoxical as it may seem - she didn’t warn the only person who could have helped her: if she told Bow that she had just gone into labor, she would have surely frightened him to death, that was true, but it would have given him a more than valid reason for being mad at her as well.

No, she had to pretend that nothing went on and hold out until their arrival on Krytis. Theoretically, according to Glimmer's calculations, there were nothing more than a few hours of travelling left.

in addition, it would have taken a long time before the actual birth, although her waters broke in the middle of the night, causing her an attack of panic-ish against which she had to fight in complete solitude.

 _"Conceal, Giim, come on..."_ She repeated in her mind after she finished changing her clothes.

She dragged herself out of the bedroom, trying to walk normally despite the - by now - typical limping gait of the pink-haired girl.

In the main room, breakfast was almost over; while Bow had decided to gorge himself on a couple of huge cookies, Adora was devouring a small muffin covered with bluish icing. The only one who was showing a slight bit of manners - paradoxical as it might be - was Catra, intent on reading a report on the PDA she had brought from Brightmoon. The cat-girl looked up just to shake her head as she observed her girlfriend and that caveman revival she was staging beside her.

"And you do keep teasing me for not behaving like a Lady, don’t you?" Catra commented sardonically, laughing to herself.

Adora wiped her mouth with a quick flick of her wrist, before replying with equal sagacity, gazing at her with a slight smile on her lips.

“You burp. At full volume. In the middle of the Queen's birthday party, no less! Does this seem the same to you?"

Bow was the first one who noticed the roundish figure of his wife a few meters away from them, bathed in the soft light of the spaceship.

"Glimmer!"

The cheerful exclamation attracted the two other girls’ attention as well and it was followed by an attempt to swallow the perhaps too generous bite that Bow had given himself, risking suffocation as a consequence.

“Sleepyhead, finally awake, huh?”

The queen strove to curl her lips into a smile, pretending some kind of numbness which had never actually reached her that night. She would have given anything to feel even vaguely drowsy, at least she wouldn't had to deal with her backpains and stomach cramps that seemed about to pay her a visit again.

Bow, completely unaware of what was happening, started to get up to help his partner sit down but Glimmer preceded her husband, waving him not to bother: picking up her pace, Glimmer managed to reach the chair just in time, right before another contraction began to tear her womb.

Resisting the pain and remaining impassive was a feat at the limits of humans; to dispel the burning pain in her lower abdomen and her back, Glimmer tried any means that seemed to be discreet enough, from squeezing whole strips of skin around her knees to stealthily gripping onto the table sides.

Breathing normally was almost impossible by now, but her senses underwent some momentary alterations: the sounds and voices became distant and muffled as if she were listening to those speeches from an adjacent room.

Her vision, needless to say, dimmed slightly as soon as the contraction reached its peak: by then Glimmer was at serious risk of letting out a groan of pain that she barely managed to fight back.  
On the other hand, the energy she put into gripping onto the table’s edge was enough to turn her knuckles white until the contraction slowly began to subside, disappearing completely a few moments later.

"Glimmer... are you okay?"

Adora's voice was what brought her back to life in the blink of an eye.

"... huh?" The purple-eyed girl suddenly jumped, looking around bewildered.

The blonde raised an eyebrow; what the hell was wrong with her? And why was she so pale? It was difficult to determine with certainty from there, but Adora even got the impression that Glimmer's forehead was beaded with sweat.

"Are you ok?" She repeated, articulating each word "You still look half asleep"

Running a hand over the back of her nape, Glimmer let out a nervous giggle.

“Oh yesyesyes, don't worry! I've been sleeping badly, that's all, hadn't you noticed that before?"

No, they hadn't: they couldn’t have noticed something that had never actually happened, but despite that no one seemed to be alarmed.

Not even Bow, who until a moment before their departure was knotted like a pretzel.

"If you say so," Adora teased her cheerfully, going back to the original speech.

“Anyway… we received a communication from Entrapta before you woke up. Apparently Krytis is still full of unknown technology to be analysed, the idea of establishing a permanent colony on the planet was great. If we didn’t, we would have had to organize a series of transport operations to take all the material to Etheria and according to Entrapta, the risk of something going wrong would have been extremely high. From what she told us- "

The words of the golden-haired young woman again started to fade, as if Glimmer had just dipped her head in a tub full of water. Her glance was lost in the air and even the time itself seemed to stop. The reason, in that case, wasn’t a contraction but from the overwhelming sense of panic that began to assail her as she realized she had gotten herself into greater trouble than she had imagined.

"What do you think about it, Glimmer?"

It was Catra who brought her back to reality, this time.

The cat-girl glanced at her girlfriend as soon as she noticed the queen's confused gaze. The latter returned to herself only after a few seconds, just enough time to allow her brain to resume its normal operating functions, so that she could process an - at least - sensible answer.

“Uh, yeah, we did great. On the other hand, Krytis was inhabited by the First Ones, I don’t think that restoring a consistent human presence on the spot will be too difficult."

The other three looked at each other in absolute puzzlement, which Glimmer didn’t miss at all.

"Yes, uh..." Bow mumbled "... we haven't been talking about Krytis for, like, five minutes"

Catra fanned the flames, with her typical sensitivity of a former force captain of the Horde.

“Sparkles, are you sure everything is okay? You look... like shit, sorry if I tell you"

At that point it was quite clear that something was wrong, but even in front of the suspicion generated by her strange behaviour, Glimmer made the best of a bad situation, continuing in what she now considered a real farce. In a different context she would have snapped something at Catra about her unruly language, but that morning she had other things to deal with.

"Forgive me..." She commented closing it all with a laugh. "I really need a cof-"

Her words were cut off all of a sudden and the expression on her face froze, causing her to close her eyes and grind her teeth hard, but a groan of pain still managed to make its way through her lips.

That was enough to put everyone on high alert.

"Glim, hey!" Bow exclaimed, quickly getting up and moving to her side, before passing an arm around her shoulders. His mind was crossed by dozens of different thoughts, one worse than the other, but none of them seemed to be even close to the facts.

Catra and Adora joined them a couple of seconds later.

"What’s wrong? Are you sick?" Adora asked, patting her hand on hers.

Glimmer didn’t open her eyelids: she was afraid of bursting into tears, something that she would have gladly avoided. She couldn’t tell them the truth, not after being warned over and over against going with them; Bow would have raged like never before and he would have probably even questioned their own relationship.

From an outside look, Glimmer seemed unresponsive and tensed, as if someone were hitting her with intense and continuous electric shocks. Somehow, the whole situation vaguely remembered the time when Shadow Weaver corrupted her powers, causing her those violent crises that all of them remembered more than well.

“Please talk to me! Glimmer! "

Only after a few moments of complete silence, the girl was convinced to open her purple eyes veiled with tears and she immediately turned to her husband.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"

Bow stared down on her without understanding, and so did her two friends.

“What are you talking about? You shouldn't have what?"

How she was supposed to tell him? There was no safer or infallible way and even if there had been, her mental clarity wouldn’t have been enough to let her choose that path. She would have just said it and that's it.

"Bow, the baby ..."

Once again, Bow's eyes widened: his throat became drier than the Crimson Desert... but for the wrong reasons.

"Is it in danger? Are there any problems with the baby? Glimmer, what..."

Exasperated by that questioning, Glimmer couldn’t help but blurt it out, after whole minutes of enviable patience worthy of the best of the princesses.

**_“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, BOW! IT'S COMING NOW!"_ **

A tumbleweed moment descended on the ship's cabin. The bomb had been dropped, although it took a moment to detonate. Glimmer's traveling companions, in fact, at first stared at her as if she had just uttered a few words in an ancient language forgotten for millennia, but what she had said resonated in their minds until one of them broke that stasis.

"You're ... you're kidding me, aren't you?" Bow stammered in a low voice, staring straight into her eyes, with an expression of mixed disbelief and terror. Deeply inside, he prayed with all his heart that it was nothing more than a joke concocted by Glimmer, with her two friend’s complicity, but the panic on Adora and Catra’s faces made that hypothesis totally unlikely. None of them would have burst out laughing, making fun of his reaction.

"Do you think that’s something I could joke about?!"

It took every bit of self-control on Bow's part not to faint, he had to preserve enough lucidity in order to be able to provide some kind of help, even if the first instinct he gave in was gett9ing mad at her.

“Fuck, Glimmer. **FUCK**! I’ve told you! 'Let's stay in Brightmoon, there’s no need to go to Krytis, Adora and Catra can take care of it', but no, no way, huh?! You decided to go rogue as usual, and now..."

Bow's harsh scolding ended as soon as he saw his wife sobbing. In the exact same moment Adora bitterly glanced at him. Only then he realized that he pushed her too far, even if it took all his willpower to calm himself down.

“Okay, sorry… yes, my fault, let's stay calm. **_CALM_**. " He repeated, before taking a few deep breaths and kneeling in front of Glimmer, entwining his fingers with hers, so that she could feel his closeness.

“Everything will be fine, you'll see. Do you trust me?"

This was enough to calm Glimmer down or at least to stop her crying. The matter wouldn’t be over just like that and she knew it well, but knowing that she could still count on Bow and her friends gave her back a small part of the trust and energy that she had lost until then, along with some kind of vague optimism. The latter, however, lasted less than a handful of snow under the sun.

"I... I'll just have to hold on until we get to Krytis."

She sighed, feeling her body preparing for a new contraction. "It has been waiting for nine months, it can wait for a little longer, can’t it?"

Catra - who until then had remained aloof and in complete silence - gazed at Bow and Adora and, ultimately, at Glimmer as well.

“Er, Sparkles…” She muttered, avoiding to look into her eyes while she kept on torturing her black leather jacket’s hem with her fingers. “I hate to disappoint you, but there’s still a day left before we get there. Possibly more."

Glimmer gawked at her wide-eyed, cursing at first mentally and then aloud: any kind of hope had been completely drained in a blink of an eye.

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" She blurted out, on the verge of tears once again: her emergency plan had just crumbled and for a moment she could feel the pure and raw fear knocking on her heart’s doors.

"Last time it didn't take us so long!”

"Yeah but…” Catra sighed “… we were using Darla. Plus, Entrapta had got her hands on it. I’m pretty sure the one we are currently using cannot compete with it"

Panic took hold on Glimmer, who tried to get up in a rush.

Such a bad idea: she felt too weak to be able to stand on her own legs and Bow barely managed to grab her right before she fell to the ground, passing his arm around her waist and helping her to put her arm around his shoulders for some support.

"Let’s turn… the bloody spacecraft… around, then!”

Leaning against the table, Glimmer found herself gasping between cramps and her groans, in a desperate attempt to get enough air into her lungs, trying not to lose consciousness.

“It would take us the same amount of time to get back to Brightmoon. We are halfway there, going forward or back would change little, if nothing at all"

Glimmer felt like if her heart had been just ripped out: continuing toward the colony wasn’t a viable alternative, but even going back couldn’t be taken into consideration. Was there a third way?

Actually yeah, there was... but Glimmer wouldn’t have liked that at all.

“Catra, take the controls. Continue on toward Krytis and turn off the limits. Go as fast as you can.” Bow ordered, without releasing his grip on the pink-haired girl not even for an instant: the last thing he wanted was letting her fall to the ground and harming her or the baby in her womb.

At those words, the former Force Captain gave him a confused look: she immediately did what he said, rushing to the driving position, despite having the impression of not having been heard, not even for a moment.

“Bow, have you listened to me, at least? We’ll never make it in time!"

The bronze-skinned young man didn’t reply: helping Glimmer walk towards their room required more concentration than he imagined and certainly that wasn’t the right moment to start discussing timing and strategies.

They couldn’t receive any kind of help and the solution appeared to be clear enough, although no one had the courage to admit it out loud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... greetings to you all, lads!  
> Well, what could i say… I’ve registered on this site just a couple of days ago but actually I’ve been hanging out around here for a few months, with a single question in my head: “Why don’t you publish the first chapter of one of my works in progress?”.
> 
> I loved She-Ra, although I can't consider myself a fan from its beginning (Actually, to be honest, I saw the whole series once season 5 was released, originally I wouldn't have taken odds on it. Yes, I was wrong and I want to apologize to the gods of OTPs), but lately my writing work has been focused entirely on this show, so... why not give it a try?  
> I must also make a smal
> 
> l premise: my native language isn't English (I'm Italian), even if I've been studying it since elementary school. I have been dealing with this language for years and I did my best with the translation. However, there might be some errors of various kinds in the text and I apologize in advance for this. If you find any grammar or syntactic mistake, feel free to correct me in the comments and, obviously, leave a review if you'd like to (They're always appreciated ^^)
> 
> For the rest ... well, I hope that the first chapter is to your liking!


	2. Don't leave me

Adora was quite sure she had never heard Glimmer screaming like that; even in the short moments when she left the room where she and Bow had taken refuge for a few hours, those cries rang out crystal clear, as if she were just a couple of meters away from them. Even Catra, generally indifferent and aloof, couldn't help but giving a few worried looks to her girlfriend, flattening her ears back.

Leaning against the edge of the bed, Glimmer had bent on her knees; she was fighting strenuously against the umpteenth contraction, trying to put into practice what the healer had taught her in the previous months.

However, imagining the excruciating pain as a fight didn’t seem to have been an effective tactic, since the queen of Brightmoon was clearly losing that battle.

Behind her, Bow was massaging his wife's spine with a series of firm - but gentle - circular motions to support her lower back, ignoring his eardrums’ whistling caused by her screams.

He was trying to do his best to provide the support and relief that his partner needed, but despite the effort and courage shown in dealing with such an unforeseen and unplanned situation, his lack of experience was still felt.

The dark-eyed young man was an archer, a tech-savvy and ultimately a front-line fighter but certainly not an obstetrician. During the time he had spent in his fathers’ library, he had the opportunity to try his hand at reading some medical books, thus acquiring some knowledge, but in the end, Bow had never witnessed a real birth. nor had he planned to manage the arrival of their first child without the assistance of someone far more experienced.

Nevertheless, that eventuality they hadn’t even seriously considered until that moment proved to be a matter to be taken head-on.

“Come on, breathe. In and out, just like the healer taught you” Bow murmured, though he doubted that his words could be heard above the screams that Glimmer was giving out without interruptions.

The latter's response was not long in coming, but it wasn’t the sweetest expression of appreciation for his help.

"What the fuck do you think... I'm trying... to do?!"

Bow was taken off guard: he was aware of the mood swings that many women in those conditions were often subjected to, but between reading it in a dusty tome and being caught in the eye of the storm there was a noticeable difference.

"Uh yeah, I mean-"

"Bow..." Glimmer gasped, passing her wrist against her forehead and wiping away some of the sweat that was covering it before giving him a killer look.

"Shut up. Shut the fuck up or I swear I'll stab you once I'm done here"

Between groans, Glimmer found herself wondering why all the future fathers turned into perfect idiots capable of nothing but stating the obvious under those circumstances.

 _'Breathe' you don’t say, I thought I had to suffocate. Dumbass"_ Glimmer mentally repeated herself.

In a couple of seconds, her guilty feelings took advantage of a very fleeting moment of clarity to invade her mind; as a consequence, her moral dropped even more.

The sparkling-haired girl, with Bow’s help - who fell silent, in the meantime - used the last energies in her legs to get on the bed, bending over the four pillows that had been gathered about half an hour before: she urgently needed something soft to lean on, as her lower limbs muscles were now unable to support her for more than a few seconds and certainly Bow couldn’t support her weight for the whole time left.

“Please kill me. Grab something heavy and throw it on my head"

That was all Glimmer managed to say, between her deep breaths. Her back seemed to be incessantly about to split in two. Perhaps not even being pierced side to side by Adora's sword could have been compared with the pains in her womb that were tearing her apart.

"That’s something I can’t do, my love..." The archer whispered, breaking his silence and passing his hands on the girl's shoulders, caressing them with the typical sweetness he had shown since the day they got married.

"On the other hand, I can promise you I won’t leave and that everything will be fine"

That was enough for her: it didn’t alleviate her physical suffering, but at least it prevented the possibility of being caught up in despair. Leaning on her knees and bending slightly forward, Glimmer did her best to normalize her breathing, squinting her eyes and concentrating on getting air into her lungs without hyperventilating.

The young archer, meanwhile, was intent on drying her forehead and neck from the thin veil of sweat that had never stopped returning at regular intervals since a few hours. The metallic smell of the spaceship walls filtered aggressively in her nostrils, combining with that of the sheets still impregnated with their bodies’ scent.

Bow wasn’t the only one who played an active part during labor: Adora kept visiting them repeatedly, both to check her friend’s conditions and to gather everything that might have been useful for the actual birth.

They hadn’t that much to rely on, though: having left without even considering the idea of an emergency childbirth, their medical supplies were extremely limited and all they had originally belonged to the first aid kit, which – as well-stocked as it was – clearly couldn’t reach the quality of the far more specialized equipment of a healer, but they had no choice: after all, even some minimal help was better than nothing.

"Glimmer, how are you?"

Adora had suddenly reappeared, making her entrance almost on tiptoes, after placing another pair of towels on the desk chair. She had had to force a lock on a closet in the room she shared with Catra to get them, but at least, in that case, she was sure that they wouldn’t have incurred the queen’s wrath for having damaged the ship.

The young olive-skinned girl just had the strength to look up, so that her purple eyes met Adora's blue ones: just a few minutes before, the answer would have been a series of unrepeatable insults and even in that case the situation wasn’t that different: the closer the crucial time approached, the more Glimmer's irritability grew exponentially.

"What kind... of fucking question is that?!"

Adora winced for a moment: the main effort on her part – besides suppressing the awkward feeling of being in the same room with her half-naked best friend – was being able to get over such bitter replies.

She managed to justify them with the lethal mix of hormones, pain, fatigue and frustration that had by now taken possession of Glimmer, whose remorse took over again for a split second, reversing her attitude in the blink of an eye.

."S-sorry... Adora, I’m sorry, really. I didn't-"

A reassuring smile arched on the lips of Etheria's saviour, who brought a hand on her shoulder.

“It's ok Glimmer, don't worry. Focus on… uh, what should you focus on in such cases?"

She asked without receiving any response from her friend. Glancing over her shoulder, she managed to read Bow's silent hand gestures without too much difficulty.

“… on breathing, yeah! That's the most important part. Breathing and, huh, relaxing"

For a short moment, Glimmer thought she was back a few hours earlier, when Adora's clumsiness and awkwardness would have made her burst out laughing all of a sudden.

"I don't want to die on a bloody spaceship" The queen sighed, hysterically giggling in an attempt to minimize her greatest fear: Glimmer knew well how many dire consequences a birth could have entailed, the potential complications were innumerable and that was why the presence of a healer was always strongly recommended.

“Don’t be silly, you’re not going to die! We got this, really!” Adora encouraged her. Their foreheads gently met after a couple of seconds and the blonde girl could feel the warmth of Glimmer’s breathing on her pale skin.

“I want you to be brave, for your baby and for yourself. I know you can do it and we'll be here with you all the time"

At hearing that, Glimmer managed to recover a bit of tranquillity before a new contraction started piercing her womb, forcing her to scream at the top of her lungs as she gasped blindly, trying to grasp Bow's hand.

“Like this… let it all out, don’t worry, that’s fine”

The king of Brightmoon was sure he felt his own bones creaking beneath that iron grip on his hand, but that wasn't enough to shatter his stoic behaviour, nor to stop him from reassuring her wife. Not a single grimace of pain distorted the expression on his face: a couple of broken fingers was nothing compared to what Glimmer was experiencing at that moment, after all.

Adora let Glimmer lean against her in turn, shifting the whole weight forward as the blonde girl's arms supported her, trying to prevent her from dropping heavily onto the bed.

The time between the beginning of the contraction and the moment it started to fade seemed to last for whole centuries: around her, the world began to blur and the colours become brighter and more saturated.

Even the sounds reached her ears in a completely distorted way, sometimes as faint as a whisper and at other times with the same power of a cannon shot a few inches from her head.

"It hurts! Please, make it stop! I can't take it anymore!"

It took every effort from Bow and Adora to be able to calm Glimmer, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"Honey, please... you need to calm down. It's okay, you're almost there, but you must hold out a little longer."

Not even a burning firebrand stuck in her throat would have been comparable to the stinging feeling in her trachea; surely – she thought – she would have ended up losing her power of speech for a few days... or forever.

Only once the pains had completely subsided, Glimmer found enough strengths to mumble the word "water" in a whisper, a request that was promptly fulfilled by Adora's diligence, who handed her a glass that her friend swallowed in one gulp, not caring too much about the drops that streaked her chin's sides.

Even small reliefs like that could no longer do anything against the widespread discomfort.

"I don't think it will take much longer," Bow said in a calm and confident voice, so as not to put more pressure on his wife than she already felt.

"I can hardly keep track of the time intervals, but we are nearly about two and a half minutes, at most three"

The young archer didn't have to add anything else; Adora had already figured out what he was trying to say and she didn't need to hear more. After having affectionately kissed her friend's forehead one last time, the etherian swordswoman tried to release her grip from Glimmer's body, assuming they both wanted to be left alone in such a moment.

It was then that Glimmer clung to her with such energy that Adora herself startled, feeling her red jacket's sleeve harshly grasped.

On her face, along with the signs of fatigue and the immense pain she was experiencing, Adora read something that she had never seen in her before: some genuine dread.

Glimmer was scared to death: she found herself forced to give birth to her first child in a damned spaceship, in the middle of sidereal space and without any kind of qualified aid.

She could rely only on herself, on her courage and her steady nerves, but her certainties' solidity was inversely proportional to the delivery’s proximity.

The more the crucial moment approached, the more she convinced herself that she couldn't make it alone: she wanted her partner by her side, of course, but in the same way, she needed her first, true friend outside of Bow.

"Don't leave me"

Two simple hissed words were enough to paralyze Adora on the spot.

A storm of different feelings clouded her mind and her gaze shifted from the pink-haired girl to her husband behind her, who released his grip from Glimmer's hand to move three of the four pillows behind her.

It was she who requested her presence so... it would surely haven’t been inappropriate if she stayed inside there with them.

Bow himself, in a more or less implicit way, tried to make her understand that her presence wasn't only welcome but fundamental as well.

It was then that Adora decided she wouldn't have ignored such a plea: it wasn't just a request made by the queen herself: Glimmer was, above all, her best friend, the one who - along with everyone on that ship, that day - had helped her through some of the darkest moments of her life. What kind of monster would have decided not to be there for her in the most special moment of her life?

"You've got to help her to hold a half-lying position. I can't do it all by myself" He explained with a serious tone, although Adora stared at nothing for a few seconds.

"Adora!" Bow repeated, more decisively, dragging her away from the wave of thoughts that was hammering her brain. He beckoned her to settle down beside him, making sure that Etheria's paladin grip was firmly on Glimmer's body before finally moving her hands away from the girl's hips and torso.

For the blue-eyed girl it was easy to notice how gruelling that "support operation" was and in that precise moment she managed to find a single positive side in having spent her whole adolescence between various types of physical training.

The direct contact between the two girls was probably what recharged a minimum of confidence in Glimmer.

Her back was leaning against Adora's chest, with her arms wrapped around Glimmer's torso, in a way that she could maintain that semi-reclining position without too many difficulties or excessive energy wasting.

That unusual scent of purified air mixed with that smell of sweat, unmade blankets, metal walls and even the slight fragrance that remained of the breakfast now abandoned on the table in the main room created a weird combination that they would have probably remembered even on their deathbeds.

The onset of another contraction allowed Adora to feel first-hand what Bow's hearing had been facing in the last few hours, without any kind of door or wall to muffle the volume of Glimmer's shrieks.

The grasp on his hand was so tight that she seemed serious about fracturing Bow's hand, who incredibly stayed impassive and quiet.

She found herself cursing the stars, the planets and the whole galaxy, along with her husband and, for just a moment, her own child whom - she was sure - she would not even be able to bring into the world.

The very idea of being a failure as a mother even before becoming it brought her to the brink of tears, in a mixture of anxiety and resentment towards herself and her selfishness.

Adora's fingers, during that, had crept through the locks of her shiny sweat-soaked hair, moving delicately against her nape in an attempt to bring her that comfort and relief without which Glimmer would have found herself at serious risk of surrender.

It was an eventuality that no one in there could even afford to consider. Trying to joke about it would have put Adora at risk of being punched by Glimmer, but she still took the risk.

"This little one's in quite a hurry to come and say hello, huh?"

And it was true.

Although she didn't want to admit it, Glimmer knew that the moment was almost upon them: she had realized it at the very moment when, as a result of the contraction's peak, she felt her body quivering like a leaf and an enormous weight right in her lower abdomen, which she didn't seem to get rid of even once the cramps ceased to torment her exhausted body.

It was at that point that it all started.  
  


***

  
“Head's already out, Glimmer. One last effort and it all ends, I promise"

The pink-haired girl was on its last legs.

Literally.

The agonising pain, comparable to an actual quartering, made her sincerely want to die like never before: being put to the sword would have been a preferable option to stay conscious for just one more minute.

That choice, unfortunately - or luckily -, was no longer in her hands.

It had never been since she had started pushing, about half an hour before.

Thirty interminable minutes had been enough to lead her into an ordeal made of suffering, shrieks and blood.

“Like this, push! Keep going, Glimmer!”

Bow’s words were the last ones she managed to hear: after that, it was a matter of seconds... and that was the last show of strength that Glimmer had to give that day: the atrocious burning that had tortured her for the previous minutes suddenly vanished into thin air, after another final scream.

The queen had just the time to let out a deep sigh, settling back against Adora's body. The surrounding environment immediately began to be swallowed by some impenetrable darkness.

Although she could easily see Bow's lips moving, Glimmer couldn't hear a single sound around her.

That shadowy fog was scratched by the last sound that reached her a few moments before she found herself isolated in total obscurity.

A single wail was what Glimmer could take with her into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand there we are! The most awaited moment has finally come.
> 
> I admit i had quite a few difficulties in writing this chapter, mostly for a simple (And possibly stupid, for some people) reason: a childbirth belongs to that kind of scenes that I usually don't describe.
> 
> Why? Well, it's a matter of inner discomfort that those situations generate in me.  
> Recently, however, I decided to face this fear (Or phobia, call it whatever you prefer) along with many others and this story, somehow, can be considered as an attempt to overcome this fear.  
> However, I hope this chapter was to your liking and as always feel free leave a review (even negative, in case i messed up XD) or to point out any errors.
> 
> Take care, lads.  
> See you soon, hopefully


End file.
